Why Northwood Myrtle Beach Restaurants Keep Locals Coming Back

As WBTW reported, "It's considered like a little secret still to this day, which is fantastic," said Chase Clardy, general manager of Thoroughbreds Chophouse, describing a restaurant that has been serving steaks off North Kings Highway since 1988. That is a strange thing to say about a restaurant sitting on a strip everyone calls Restaurant Row, a name built for visibility, not secrecy. For Northwood residents, the long-running restaurants on this stretch of Kings Highway are close enough to keep coming back to.

Northwood sits just beyond that stretch of Kings Highway. The neighborhood runs from 76th Avenue North to 79th Avenue North, boxed in by the 17 Bypass on one side and Kings Highway on the other, a pocket of brick ranches with no HOA and mature lots that has stayed put while the Grand Strand around it turned over condo towers and chain restaurants every decade. What that boundary line does not show on a map is how directly it borders one of the oldest surviving restaurant clusters on the entire coast. The long-running restaurants are nearby, but their proximity alone does not explain their longevity.

A Strip Of Long-Running Restaurants

Restaurant Row runs along Kings Highway from where the 17 Bypass and 17 Business merge on the south end up to the Kings Road interchange near the North Myrtle Beach line, a corridor that has absorbed decades of Grand Strand dining trends. Most of what opened along it in any given decade eventually closed, rebranded, or got demolished for something newer. What is notable is which restaurants did not.

Thoroughbreds Chophouse, at 9706 N Kings Highway between Lake Arrowhead and Chestnut Road, opened in 1988 and is still serving dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Nakato, a few blocks away, opened in 1978 as the first Japanese steakhouse in the Myrtle Beach area, at a time when hibachi tables were a novelty rather than a category. The Original Benjamin's Calabash Seafood, at 9593 N Kings Highway, has been running its buffet-style seafood room for more than three decades and can seat 1,000 people at once, with room for as many as 1,000 diners.

None of these restaurants are marketed as hidden gems. They are on the busiest commercial highway on the Strand, visible from the road, easy to find. Their longevity is notable, and they are close to Northwood, a no-HOA neighborhood with mature lots and a stable residential character. That proximity makes them nearby dining options for residents, without establishing why the restaurants have lasted.

The Golf Cart Path Is The Tell

A recent Northwood listing description mentioned something easy to overlook: a golf cart path on 79th Avenue. That detail matters more than it looks. Golf cart infrastructure gets built where there is enough regular local traffic to justify it, not where tourists pass through for a week and leave. A path connecting a residential block to a commercial highway is a signal that enough people make that same short trip often enough for it to be worth paving separately from the road.

The path and the restaurants are examples of how close Northwood is to the commercial corridor. Thoroughbreds and Nakato are only a few blocks away, as are the businesses along Kings Highway. The golf cart path is one nearby feature of the neighborhood; it does not establish who visits the restaurants or why they have remained open.

The Newer Layer: Errands Without Leaving The Loop

The restaurants came first, opening in the 1970s and 1980s when this stretch of Kings Highway was still filling in. The everyday errand infrastructure came later, as the year-round residential population around Northwood grew enough to support it.

Grande Dunes Marketplace sits at the entrance to Grande Dunes on the 17 Bypass, at a signalized intersection at 82nd Avenue North, about a 99,000 square foot center anchored by a US Foods Chef Store and a CVS Pharmacy. A few minutes further down Kings Highway, the Village Shops at Grande Dunes at 7925 N Kings Highway is anchored by a 45,600 square foot Publix, with smaller retail and restaurant space wrapped around it.

Neither of these centers existed when Nakato opened its hibachi grills in 1978. Their arrival decades later marks the point where this corridor stopped being just a dinner destination for locals and became a full daily-errand loop: groceries, a pharmacy, a bulk food supplier, and dinner, all within the same few minutes of driving or golf-cart riding from Northwood.

A short list of what that loop actually covers within a few minutes of Northwood:

• Groceries and pharmacy at the Publix-anchored Village Shops at Grande Dunes
• Bulk and restaurant-supply shopping plus CVS at Grande Dunes Marketplace
• Three decades-old dinner options on Kings Highway itself, none more than a few minutes apart
• Grand Strand Medical Center on 82nd Parkway, for the kind of everyday healthcare access that matters more once you are not just visiting

What The Longevity Actually Signals

None of this is really about restaurants. It is about the contrast between a corridor of long-running businesses and the tourist-driven development around it. Northwood sits a few blocks away, close to the restaurants and the other services along Kings Highway, but that proximity alone does not explain which businesses have lasted.

Northwood was never built to be a resort address. It has no HOA, no amenity package, no golf course frontage of its own, just brick ranches on lots big enough for a fence and a pool, a few blocks from the beach and a few blocks from Pine Lakes Country Club history on one side and a working commercial corridor on the other. That commercial corridor absorbing the highway traffic is part of why the residential streets inside Northwood stay as quiet as they do. The long-running businesses are part of the corridor’s history, alongside the neighborhood that remains close by.

If you already live in Northwood, none of this is news exactly, but it is worth knowing what you are actually part of when you pull into Thoroughbreds on a Thursday or ride a golf cart down 79th for a prescription refill. You are part of the neighborhood beside this stretch of Kings Highway.

If you are weighing a move into this pocket of Myrtle Beach, or thinking about what a Northwood property is actually worth given what surrounds it, Kim Brooks can walk you through the details that matter, from zoning and lot size to what a few blocks of Kings Highway really means for daily life. Schedule a consultation when you are ready to talk specifics.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.